Does using images instead of text affect email deliverability?

The consensus among email marketing experts, marketers, and technical documentation is that using images instead of text can negatively impact email deliverability. A poor text-to-image ratio is a common trigger for spam filters, as spammers often use images to hide malicious links or bypass these filters. Emails with excessive images, especially without sufficient text or appropriate alt text, are likely to be flagged as spam and can harm sender reputation. It's crucial to maintain a healthy balance of text and images. Embedding all text as an image is strongly discouraged due to SEO issues and potential blocking by email clients. Using alt text on images is critical for conveying the image's purpose even when images are blocked. Avoid image-only emails and ensure images are hosted on trusted servers. The '80/20 text-to-image ratio' is often misunderstood; thoughtful use is more important than rigid adherence to a specific ratio.

The consensus among email marketers is that using images instead of text can negatively impact email deliverability. A poor text-to-image ratio is a common trigger for spam filters, as spammers often use images to hide malicious links or bypass these filters. While visually appealing emails are encouraged, excessive use of images, especially without sufficient text, can lead email clients to flag the email as spam. Maintaining a healthy balance of text and images is crucial. Embedding all text as an image is also discouraged due to SEO issues and potential blocking of images by email clients. Using alt text on images is critical for conveying the image's purpose, even when images are blocked. The overall recommendation is to strive for a reasonable text-to-image balance and avoid image-only emails.

Experts generally agree that images in email can affect deliverability, though not always as a direct cause. Overuse of images, especially when text is lacking or used inappropriately (e.g., embedding all text as an image), can increase the likelihood of emails landing in spam folders and harming sender reputation. Images can contribute to deliverability issues if they dominate the message, lack alt text, or are hosted on untrusted servers. The '80/20 text-to-image ratio' rule, often cited, may be a misinterpretation. While images aren't inherently bad, they're a factor considered by spam filters, and their use should be thoughtful.

Technical documentation consistently indicates that using images instead of text can negatively affect email deliverability. Spam filters analyze the ratio of images to text, and emails with high image content and low text content are more likely to be flagged as spam. This is partly because spammers use images to hide URLs or bypass text-based spam filters. Furthermore, emails predominantly composed of images can lead to recipients marking them as spam, negatively impacting sender reputation. Bulk emails should avoid the exclusive use of images, as images may be unavailable and text ensures the message can still be interpreted. Mail clients should also notify users when an email contains only images and implement safeguards to protect against undesirable content.